


recovery

by Starfire (kalypsobean)



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Implied Relationships, M/M, Post-Avengers (2012), Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-24
Updated: 2015-01-24
Packaged: 2018-03-08 21:07:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3223463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalypsobean/pseuds/Starfire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint needs some time to know his head's on straight. Tony arranges it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	recovery

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rubyelf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rubyelf/gifts).



Clint has pretty much nowhere to go, after. That's not how he ends up at a range in Bumfuck, New York, but it's pretty close. For ten bucks he hired a shitty, chipped bow and fired arrow after arrow into a target that didn't move but reminded him of Cap's shield just enough to piss him off.

"We're closing up, dude," the anonymous everyguy said, and Clint handed the bow back with adrenaline still making his arm shake and his mind utterly useless for deciding where to go next. Which is when, of course, a black town car glides up.

"That's my ride," Clint says, because it's not obvious at all. The back door opens as he lets the office door close behind him, and the last of the pure sunlight glints off Tony's aviators.

 

"Me either," Tony says, after the car's taken them down the highway in silence. "Sucks, doesn't it."

"Yeah," Clint says, and settles back into the seat. It's actually really comfortable, for being a leather encrusted, foam coated, wire frame.

"That's for you," Tony says, nudging a not-quite-suitcase shaped case across the floor. "I was bored," he says, cutting off any chance Clint has of pushing it away. And Clint gets that, he gets deflection like a second skin he takes out to get through the day, but he can't.

Then the car slows, stops, and they're at some country house large enough to house an army. "You can stay as long as you want," Tony says. _Until you're sure I won't hurt anyone,_ Clint thinks he means. Then Tony gets out of the car and stretches his arms above his head, cracks his neck, and heads off towards the door. _Huh._. Clint leans forward to thank the driver, only to find the front seats empty.

He shakes his head, grabs the case (light, almost weightless), and gets out of the car. What Tony wants, Tony gets, and only because Clint's not sure he knows how to wake up a car that drives itself.

 

Tony seems to have disappeared, so Clint picks a room with a good vantage point but few easily accessible alternate methods of entry, stretches out on the bed, and wakes up to find it dark. It's not that he wasn't aware he was that tired, bone-exhausted from being on edge and hyper aware of each look, each message, each little thing that may or may not be someone seeing if it will set him off; it's that his body let him, hypervigilance be damned. Someone brought him food, nothing that would spoil in a couple of hours, but not factory made; he doesn't register the taste as he takes a small bite of bread and waits for a reaction, or when there is none and he eats it all, hungry in the same way he was tired. 

The box Tony gave him almost glares from the corner until he kneels down, opens it up and finds a bow, strongest alloy he can't name and carefully calibrated, he can tell as soon as he lifts it and it settles in his grip like an extension of his hand.

He realises Tony made this for him at about the same time as his thumb brushes across the grip in just the wrong way and he drops it so that it doesn't snap on his hand.

"Thanks for that, Tony," he says, out loud just to hear his voice.

"Unfortunately, sir, Mr Stark is no longer on the property."

"Uh, right. I knew that," he says. "JARVIS, please convey my intense gratitude to Mr Stark."

"It is done, sir." JARVIS doesn't seem to process sarcasm, or if he does, he's used enough to Tony to ignore it. 

He wishes the bow came with an instruction kit, and then, when he's figured out how to get it back and string it properly, that he could try it out; then, he remembers, he's on the largest single block of land he's ever seen Stateside. _I'm slow lately,_ , he thinks, and he heads out, down the stairs and out the back as if he already knew the way, as if Tony had told him why he was here.


End file.
